Starcraft 2 Beta is taking way too much space!

[Hav0x]

The replays are pretty small. My biggest one is 500k, and most are around 200k. I suppose if you've played thousands of games, though, they'll add up.



I agree. What others have said is true, hard drives are cheap these days. However, I don't think that gives license to every game company to throw a 1 GB file onto my hard drive every time they want to update 1 MB of game data.

It's pretty much the only way to ensure replay compatibility with older versions.

[n00bonicPlague]

Unfortunately, that is the price.

If you want all your replays, you'll need all the versions.

[Maul]

Almost 10gb? That's a I call a real game. Yeahhhh

[Tobit]

It's pretty much the only way to ensure replay compatibility with older versions.

I'm not much of a programmer, but it seems like they should be able to modularize the code. If I make a simple program, it's going to consist of several subroutines or functions. I can change one of these functions without messing with the rest of the code. I can easily envision swapping in the changed code and leaving the rest untouched. If someone wants to run an old version of the program, it's not hard to picture plugging the old function back.

The only difference with SC2 is that of scale. They may not have planned it to be modular, though, and if that's the case, you're right. It would then probably require a large amount of rewriting of the code.

[TheEconomist]

They've got to come up with something better. Even a 500GB HD will be crippled by StarCraft 2 if it keeps up this way. This method is probably just a hastily put together way for beta, I mean really, it should be fairly easy just to have all core files put to the same redundant files instead of copying them.

[Nicol Bolas]

The only thing that's really annoying for me is that it puts files like the replays and maps in the My Documents folder, which is on my computer's system partition.

Your My Documents folder can be moved.

If I make a simple program, it's going to consist of several subroutines or functions. I can change one of these functions without messing with the rest of the code. I can easily envision swapping in the changed code and leaving the rest untouched. If someone wants to run an old version of the program, it's not hard to picture plugging the old function back.

Functions are not free-standing objects. Even in source code, functions tend to be packaged inside of files that contain many functions. And when you're talking about compiled executables, that's many functions from many files. Millions of lines of code.

You maybe can break certain related code up into DLLs. But even then, your best granularity between them is at the DLL level.

However, you might notice that the SC2 executable+DLLs aren't anywhere near 1GB. So obviously there's a lot more going on than just replicating code. The unit definitions have to be retained, so that they have the exact same behavior. Animations need to be retained. Probably textures and models too, assuming that a patch can alter these.

Even a 500GB HD will be crippled by StarCraft 2 if it keeps up this way.

How many versions of SC2 do you expect there to be in 5 years? There have been 16 versions of SC1. Assuming 2 GB per version, that's 32GB.

Not a lot.

[Genopath]

Get rid of early versions. Replay won't even be valid since the game will be so different upon release.

[Crazy_Jonny]

So every time there's a new patch you're basically re-downloading the game eh? I think the beta builds won't be present in the retail version, unless someone wants to manually put it into the folder.

I think for people who don't care about replays, this kind of thing should be optional - meaning when you update the game, the updater asks if you want to preserve the previous build for viewing replays. Unless they can find a better way to optimize the patches, the user should have the option to download previous versions of the game if he plans on saving replays. Since that's a very small percentage this shouldn't be a default thing.

[TheRabidDeer]

So every time there's a new patch you're basically re-downloading the game eh? I think the beta builds won't be present in the retail version, unless someone wants to manually put it into the folder.

I think for people who don't care about replays, this kind of thing should be optional - meaning when you update the game, the updater asks if you want to preserve the previous build for viewing replays. Unless they can find a better way to optimize the patches, the user should have the option to download previous versions of the game if he plans on saving replays. Since that's a very small percentage this shouldn't be a default thing.

Not even close to redownloading the game for each patch. Regardless:
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html...21561&sid=5000
"When the second phase of beta begins shortly before the release of the game it will include a new patch. This patch will be removing all previous version folders. Any replays created during the first phase of the beta will no longer be viewable once the next phase begins. "

[TheEconomist]

How many versions of SC2 do you expect there to be in 5 years? There have been 16 versions of SC1. Assuming 2 GB per version, that's 32GB.

Not a lot.

Even 32GB is a monstrous amount if you have a decent size collection of MP3, video, or game collection. For me, StarCraft 2 isn't really an install and reinstall kind of game. It's the kind of game that stays on a HD until it dies. If the game were to be 32GB it would be a problem on 500GB. Besides, I said "at this rate" which is a very important keyword that you obviously missed.